Scientists No Longer Sharing Information?

chill writes: "A little while back there was an item here on Slashdot about the debate over public funded research and whether or not it should be required to be "open". Well, here is some ammunition to one side of the debate. It seem there is an article in the Chicago Tribune about the increasing unwillingness of genetic researchers to share supporting information with colleagues. The study is from the Journal of the American Medical Association for those who want more than the second-hand summary of the Trib."

Comments

Hard to figure out?

[the_2nd_coming]

well, if you look at the last decade in Genetic research, Scientists are allowed to patent the genes that they dicover.......this has lead to the unwillingness to share since sharing would cost them the potential money that can be made with the gene........I have always said that Patents on genes was a bad disision.......at the turn of the 20th century, scientists tried to patent Elements on the periodic table......the were not allowed because they belonged to everyone.....well, how is that logic diffrent for Genes?

Re:Hard to figure out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your compairison to patenting elements doesn't apply here because you can't patent a gene. You can only patent the use or application of that gene for a specific purpose.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[s20451]

Scientists are allowed to patent the genes that they dicover.......this has lead to the unwillingness to share since sharing would cost them the potential money that can be made with the gene

Before you rush to place the usual blame on intellectual property, look at the results of the study. The top three reasons for witholding information were, in order:

1. Too much effort to comply with request;
2. Protecting a student's ability to publish; and
3. Protecting one's own ability to publish.

None of these have to do with patenting, but 2 and 3 likely have to do with self-interest in an incredibly competetive research environment. You wouldn't want to help a competing group to scoop your own research before you had a chance to completely analyze it.

Clearly, self-interest is at play here -- not an unlikely quest for riches from patenting (the odds of which are somewhat akin to playing the lottery), but the more mundane quest for tenure and grant funding.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[sam_handelman]

I have always said that Patents on genes was [sic] a bad disision [sic] ... scientists tried to patent Elements ...

The logic on genes is different in a couple of respects; an individual gene is not a fundamental aspect of nature; genes are nearly infinite in number, as opposed to elements, which are finite; unlike elements, genes can be modified/designed. There are extensive and legimitate differences between a patent on a gene and a patent on an element.

I would say that patents on genes shouldn't be impossible, they should just be more difficult to get and more limited in scope. At the moment, I have considerable hearsay (that's the wrong term) evidence that patents on genes are stiffling innovation.

Before I start, I am a Structural Biologist and a Computational Biologist, I might also be called a Biochemist, Cell Biologist, Molecular Biologist, Biostatistician, Bioninformatician or Biophysicist. However, I am not a Geneticist.

The conclusion, reached by the Tribune, that profit motive is having a disastrous impact on genetics information sharing is reading too much into the article. I'd have to head into the university library to actually get a copy of the full text of the article, but most of what the article concludes is that geneticists feel worse about failure to share information than scientists in the other life sciences.

Geneticists were as likely as other life scientists to deny others' requests and to have their own requests denied. However, other life scientists were less likely to report that withholding had a negative impact on their own research as well as their field of research. - Jama article

Saying that geneticists feel worse about information sharing in their field - while certainly an interesting finding - is not sufficient to conclude that

The moneymaking potential of genetic discoveries is pushing an increasing number of scientists to withhold information about how they conducted research ... - Tribune

Now, I will channel the spirit of Eric Cartman:
Bad Chicago Tribune! [Whack] That's my pot pie! [Whack] Gimme back my pie, you stupid paper! [Whack]

Re:Hard to figure out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, where's my Unnilpentium? I think I deserve my share of unstable isotopes.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[enrayged]

also, wouldnt it be a question of funding? I mean, if information was shared before publishing, then the potential for "theft" of the discovery may cause departments to lose grant money for not producing results.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have considerable hearsay (that's the wrong term) evidence

The term you're probably looking for is "anecdotal evidence".

Re:Hard to figure out?

[J. J. Ramsey]

"an individual gene is not a fundamental aspect of nature"

"Fundamental aspect" has nothing to do with it. Look, patents are supposed to regulate *inventions,* human-manufactured artifical creations.

"There are extensive and legimitate differences between a patent on a gene and a patent on an element."

However, unless one is talking about a gene that has been modified, genes are no more inventions than elements are. Both are from nature and are discovered, not made.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[coyul]

However, unless one is talking about a gene that has been modified, genes are no more inventions than elements are.

Well, in this case, that is exactly what one is talking about. The only successful patents thus far have been on modified genetic strains (Vitamin A enriched rice, the cancer-prone mouse from Harvard, etc.)

Re:Hard to figure out?

[sam_handelman]

A distinction can be drawn between modifying the gene itself, and modifying an organism by cloning a gene into it.

I believe that JJ is objecting to the patent of the gene, itself, which is a natural thing and not an invention. I still maintain that such a patent is a lesser degree of absurdity than a patent on U-234 would be; but I agree with JJ that they should not be issued.

However, I do think you should be able to patent technologies that utilise specific natural genes - including the "invention" of cloning a particular gene for a particular purpose. Patents like that, which bother some people, don't bother me, and they basically amount to a patent on the gene, at least from a commercial standpoint.

You can also patent a gene where you have modified the gene itself, of course, although what you ought to get a patent on is the modification (which is clearly an invention.)

Patents which actually are on a naturally occuring gene, directly, rather than an application of the gene, are an insult.

Likewise, patenting all possible screens for a gene that (say) causes kidney disease is also an insult - it is like patenting the desired end of catching mice, or patenting the act of immobilising a mouse's tail, rather than a design for a mousetrap.

This may all seem like splitting hairs, but the overextended patents that are being granted are having - I am concinced of this from (thank you, Mr. Anonymous) anecdotal evidence even though I do not have any hard numbers - a chilling effect on innovaction in certain areas. As more and more of these bad, over-reaching patents are issued, the effect they have can be expected to get worse.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the deal with all these '.....'? Ya' stupid fuck. Did you ever take a course on basic grammar?

Re:Hard to figure out?

[Swaffs]

I'd like to patent arithmetic. That way if anyone wants to do math, they owe me money. How much money? Well, they'll have to calculate, which is going to cost them. How much will it cost them? Well they'll have to calculate that too, which means more bucks in my pocket.

I think I'm going to be rich very soon.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[J. J. Ramsey]

"However, I do think you should be able to patent technologies that utilise specific natural genes - including the "invention" of cloning a particular gene for a particular purpose."

If the patent was specific on the implemetation, i.e. the cloning is done in a specific way, or the administering of the gene is done a certain way, I'd be fine with a patent on that, too.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[Chuuk Noris]

Before you rush to place the usual blame on intellectual property, look at the results of the study.

Clearly, self-interest is at play here -- not an unlikely quest for riches from patenting (the odds of which are somewhat akin to playing the lottery), but the more mundane quest for tenure and grant funding.

Although everything you state is factually accurate, I can't help but wonder about this. The results of the study as published by JAMA are from cards that they mailed out to people. In other words, the study is simply examining the claims that the respondants chose to make, not the truth.

Now, I would expect people to be fairly straightforward about whether or not they had been denied in a request for additional information. There is really no reason that I can concieve of to misrepresent this. But how open are people going to be if they're engaged in a pursuit for money which requires secrecy?

Of course, one might point out that this is a fairly-anonymous sort of survey, and that because of this people might tend to be truthful and open. But that doesn't give us any conclusive evidence about the intentions of the people in filling in these cards. Outside of the fact that information is not being shared, I myself consider much of the rest of the survey of little value, leaving the question of greed (be it for grants or patenting) an open one.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not hard to figure out...

They probably have all read _The Selfish Gene_ by now and are just acting accordingly; being selfish with the genes :)

Re:Hard to figure out?

[mpe]

Scientists are allowed to patent the genes that they dicover.......this has lead to the unwillingness to share since sharing would cost them the potential money that can be made with the gene........

Also they could publish, someone else patents or has patented part of their work. Then they find their work hampered by licencing fees and paying lawyers.

I have always said that Patents on genes was a bad disision.......at the turn of the 20th century, scientists tried to patent Elements on the periodic table......the were not allowed because they belonged to everyone.....well, how is that logic diffrent for Genes?

The rules around "Interlectual property" have changed over the last hundred years.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[egeorge]

This is an interesting point that I also noticed. The reasons stated for not sharing seem to be oriented towards academic competition, not economic competition. I know that scientists are always jockying for funding and support, and publishing first will often secure such funding. However, the economics of science seem very different (in scale) from that of the big pharmacutical companies using patents to control the production of medicines.

I wonder how close the relationship is between the publishing scientists and the patent owners?

Does a scientist who publishes first usually get a patent (and presumably royalties)?

Or is the competition confined to the economics of science?

Re:Hard to figure out?

[sjames]

None of these have to do with patenting, but 2 and 3 likely have to do with self-interest in an incredibly competetive research environment.

Actually, they may all be oblique references to patenting. Since no researcher wants to say "I don't share because I have chosen to abandon the longstanding ethic of information exchange in favor of nonexistant corperate ethics". So, difficulty of drawing up necessary legal documents to allow sharing without loosing the ability to patent or too much beurocratic red tape to get clearance to share from management becomes 'too much effort to comply with request' or 'protecting ability to publish'. Perhaps publish has become a euphamism for patent?

No, I don't absolutely know this to be true (short of telepathic interrogation, I couldn't know for certain), but I note that the reasons given weren't such a problem before.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[GrEp]

The better question is: How are genes different from logic? The sequences encode formulas for creating protiens. They are programs on a computer we call the cell.

We live (most readers) in a capitalist society. The thing that drives it is competition for resources.

What bad things do patents today do to innovation?:

1. Close information in testing phases.

2. Give profit to the first lab that has its lawyers file the paperwork.

3. Give lawyers money from "prior art" disputes.

What good things?

1. They allow small entitys to spend money in research and development that don't have the resources to manufacture the goods they design.

Getting rid of patents is great for huge corperations that have the production resources, but it sucks for all the little guys.

If you belive that argument you are a little nieve. Hear much about architects, engineers, and programmers that were low paid? There are valid business models for the little guys.

We don't need patents or long term copyright in our society. The only class that gets a lot out of them is lawyers, which tend to be our lawmakers.

Re:Hard to figure out?

[cmdr_fishtaco]

I received a patent for Carbon and have a patent pending on Hydrogen. I only wish that I had been able to get Oxygen.

Einstein Effect, sort of

[redhotchil]

I remember vaguely that Einstein once mentioned the probability of two scientists coming to the same conclusion at different places, trying to rule out the possibility of copying one another's work. Knowing this, wouldn't it suck if my tax dollars were going to two research agencies keeping secrets and wasting double the money finding the same thing? Bleh.

Re:Einstein Effect, sort of

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. Independent validation is a wonderful thing, after all. It would only be wasteful if the duplication was for something widely accepted or clearly established. When it's cutting edge experimental work, the more the merrier. Not so useful for theoretical work, but genetics is a pretty applied field. If it's something important enough to keep secret, it's probably important enough to have duplication to ensure that the experimentation was correct.

Re:Einstein Effect, sort of

[Anonymous Coward]

Einstein effect:

1) Gauss, Lobachevsky, Bolyai simultaneously discovered non-Euclidean geometry.

2) Abel, Jacobi simultaneously discovered elliptical integreal.

3) Vallee Poussin, Hadamard simultaneously proved prime number theorem.

4) Erdos, Selberg simultaneously find an elementary proof of prime number theorem.

And most famous of them all: Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus at the same time.

Well, it's better than...

[Mahtar]

From the article:
Forty-seven percent of the academic geneticists who asked other colleagues for information, data and materials related to published research were turned down...

Coincidentally, a vast percentage improvement over their collective attempts at dating.

nigga jam flava

[Moderator]

Hmmm...most everybody agrees that information should be open, but then again, some of our biggest advancements have come from scientists working in secrecy (example: atom bomb, the space program). I dunno if this is such a bad thing. Competition seems to keep people motivated.

Re:nigga jam flava

[moonbender]

(example: atom bomb, the space program)

Some more examples, please. Neither of those two qualifies as one of the biggest advancements to me.

Re:nigga jam flava

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Those were more a result of huge government spending than anything else. If we were at war and it was determined that genetic engineering held the key to victory, you can bet that advancement would take place faster than we've seen thus far.

Greed

[funkhauser]

Greed. That's all there is to it. All those biotech IPOs tell us that genetics research could be highly lucrative. When money enters into the equation, scientists are often driven more by profits than the good they could be doing for mankind.

And that's what's happening here. There's very little difference between proprietary software and "closed-source" science. Both put profits before progress.

Re:Greed

[zaius]

That's actually not true. If you had read the Chicago Tribune article (which I doubt you did) or the JAMA article (which I really doubt you did), you would have noticed that it gave reasons for _why_ scientists were witholding information. About 60% witheld information to preserve the ability of grad students and junior faculty to publish it, and about 50% witheld info so they could publish it later. While the second reason may be slightly selfish, that's the way science has been for hundreds of years. Furthermore, if nobody gave grad students anything to put in their dissertations, nobody would be getting PhD's anymore, and then we'd fall a few decades behind in research. READ THE ARTICLES!!!

I really enjoyed reading your last paragraph:

There's very little difference between proprietary software and "closed-source" science. Both put profits before progress.

I believe that's the most karma-whorific sentence I've ever read on /. (or anywhere else, for that matter). While we're on the subject though, there were a whole lot of tech IPO's promoting open source projects that were supposed to be "gold mines"... why don't you whine about those?

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, if nobody gave grad students anything to put in their dissertations, nobody would be getting PhD's anymore, and then we'd fall a few decades behind in research.

Huh? What do degrees or bureaucracy in general have to do with progress? Degrees are just an invention of our society and don't mean shit.
It's perfectly possibly to conduct research in a society without stooopid titles.

Re:Greed

[yintercept]

Personally, I think scientists should publish their work before they finish it...just like I think programmers should release their code before they test it. A web filled with have cocked ideas is ...

[nah i think I will just press the enter button before ending the post...I will be less greedy that way]

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

I shouldn't really have to explain this.

The freaking title isn't the important thing. Being able to _get_ the title shows that you've undergone extensive and rigorous training to be able to do the job, and not only that have actually completed an original research project to a publishable level. Having the title just shows that you did that. However, people do like to keep their grad students from getting scooped, as in the real world your publications _do_ help determine what kind of job you're going to get, since they are at least a rough indicator of what kind of research you are capable of.

Sure, we could stick a pipettor into Bob the Janitor's hands, but in the real world he's not gonna know what to do with it.

Re:Greed

[merdark]

Since I work in the biotech field, I can say first hand that zaius got it completely correct. The lab I work for commonly withholds information, "until it's published". Unfortunately there is as little honor among scientists as there is among any group of people. Withholding information is the only way to garuntee getting a publication out of it.

And it's not just fame or greed that causes this either. Publications have a direct effect on getting funded, and getting funded is synonymous with keeping your job in science. With the lack of funds governments give to science, getting funding can become a major factor in holding information back for a while.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

You have been trolled! You have lost! Have a nice day!

Geez, nobody has a sense of humor of these days!

Re:Greed

[snowraider]

Of the geneticists who said they intentionally withheld data regarding their published work, 80 percent reported it required too much effort to produce the requested information, 64 percent said they were protecting the ability of a student or junior faculty member to publish and 53 percent said they were protecting their own right to publish further findings

No, 80% SAID that it was either too much effort, they were protecting the ability of a junior member to publish, or their own right to further publishing.

Since when has the scientific community assumed that once you publish on a topic you have a further right to publish more? Since when is not sharing science helping anyone else publish? Furthermore, just publishing your methods does not prohibit future PhD students from using them. What it does allow is future PhD students that are unaffiliated with you to check and perhaps contradict your results.

And since scientists are apparently withholding information that relates to their research, why assume that they are perfectly honest with reguards to disclosing their reasons? Perhaps the summary really should say that 80% say it would take too much work--above and beyond the patent application.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

No. That just means you havent been around long enough.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

On thought, you don't do research do you? I didn't think so, I would suggest you take advice given by those who do when we say the article was relatively bs, thanks.

Re:Greed

[markmoss]

Previous posts noted that -- but also that the scientists responding to the poll about why they don't share data may be lying. I find it rather suspicious that this lack of sharing became much more of a problem just as valuable patents became possible. If it wasn't too much work to share the data when it was in hand-written notebooks or typed (on a typewriter, not a computer) reports, why is it too hard now that the data is almost always computerized?

Re:Greed

[Paolomania]

If you had read the Chicago Tribune article (which I doubt you did) or the JAMA article (which I really doubt you did), you would have noticed that it gave reasons for _why_ scientists were witholding information. About 60% witheld information to preserve the ability of grad students and junior faculty to publish it, and about 50% witheld info so they could publish it later.

Puh-leeease! Like anyone is going to publicly admit "I withold research because I want all the ca$h for myself!".

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a valid question and it got a valid answer. Whether it was intended as troll or not is completely irrelevant.
Some people also like to subsequently declare their comment as "troll" once they see their opinion countered with a good argument just to have a partial "victory".

Sharing and Patents

[the eric conspiracy]

The reason the patent system was established in the first place was to encourage sharing of information. What company is going to disclose the technical content of the products they sell unless there is something like a patent to protect the compotetitve edge they have won through their technology?

Re:Sharing and Patents

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

The reason the patent system was established in the first place was to encourage sharing of information.

True enough. It's a shame that the effect of the patent system, currently, is to choke off innovation and information sharing.

Re:Sharing and Patents

[Ben Jackson]

True enough. It's a shame that the effect of the patent system, currently, is to choke off innovation and information sharing.

A patent grants a temporary monopoly on an invention in return for a thorough description of how it works. Getting a patent requires information sharing. Without the patent process it would be imperative for companies to conceal their intellectual property. The patent process rewards them for sharing. Go back 17-20 years and you have a pile of millions of inventions that you can use freely, each one carefully described and illustrated.

I think it's equally obvious that patents do not "choke off innovation". Who out there is not trying to think of better ways to do things just because bad patents have been granted? Preventing people from using inventions (even if they are obvious in retrospect) doesn't choke off innovation. Profit, maybe, but not innovation.

Re:Sharing and Patents

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Preventing people from using inventions (even if they are obvious in retrospect) doesn't choke off innovation...

... unless the patent is used to threaten (or extort from) people who build upon it. For example, when a company participates in establishing industry standards, then springs a lurking patent on people once the standard has been implemented.

The current patent system does a lot to choke off innovation, in no small part by shifting emphasis away from innovators and towards lawyers crafting the most restrictive patents possible. I don't believe that patents have to have this effect but I do believe that the current regime -- a PTO driven by application fees, understaffed, overworked, and ill-equipped -- leads to a culture where patents are used as weapons and not as stimulators for innovation.

Re:Sharing and Patents

[david.johns]

Actually, try reading some patents sometime. I have done so for various reasons and discovered something that definitely invalidates your reasoning. I'm going to pick on one set of boldface words, and then give you a link.

thorough description of how it works

Search for a patent. Virtually any patent.

Re:Sharing and Patents

[mpe]

I think it's equally obvious that patents do not "choke off innovation".

Assuming a patent system which works correctly.

Who out there is not trying to think of better ways to do things just because bad patents have been granted?

However when "bad patents" excede more than a trivial proportion of patents issued things are rather broken.

Preventing people from using inventions (even if they are obvious in retrospect) doesn't choke off innovation. Profit, maybe, but not innovation.

Maybe they can't even test if their idea will even work, because doing that would infringe on a pile of bad patents.

Re:Sharing and Patents

[markmoss]

The idea of patents is good, the present implementation is lousy.

1) Too many patents are granted without any "thorough description of how it works." If this is an attempt to gain the protection of the patent without giving up the trade secrets, it's breaking the basic bargain involved in patents. And if it's a case of trying to patent an undeveloped idea so as to be able to sue whoever later actually delivers a working invention, then granting such vague patents does indeed choke off innovation.

What is needed is a requirement that either the description be clear enough that engineers can construct a working device, or a working device be delivered to and stored at the expense of the patent requestor. If you can't prove that you knew how to build the device at the time of the patent application, the patent is void.

2) Too many patents are granted covering ideas which are NOT new. The Australian patent office granted a patent for the wheel, and the US granted a patent for "training using a manual." The wheel patent application was a prank. The training manual application appears to be serious -- but are they going to sue the US Army for training methods that were old in 1940, or are they going to try to bully some small company into coughing up the dough rather than facing an expensive trial?

More typically (and the training manual patent may be one of these), the patent will mix one small new idea in with lots of old ideas, then claim it all. The PO should sort out the prior art in these, but obviously the US, Aussie, and presumably most other PO's have been overwhelmed until this is no longer possible. This puts the onus on companies trying to produce other products incorporating those old ideas to sort out what was really patentable, and possibly defend their interpretation in court.

There is no penalty for over-reaching like this. So I have suggested before: If two or more claims in a patent application are proven bogus, it is entirely disallowed, published, and any actual innovations contained therein become public domain.

3. It costs too much to challenge a bogus patent in court, or even to do the research to determine that it is provably bogus. The first fix for this is a "loser pays" system for legal costs. Second, I suggest that when a patent is granted the patent-holder be required to post a bond of, say, $10,000. If someone challenges the patent and the patent-holder chooses not to answer the challenge ("Gee, I didn't know the US Army used training manuals in 1940"), this bond pays (some of) the challenger's expenses. If the patent-holder takes it to trial and loses, the bond is just a tiny down-payment on what he'll owe...

Nice writing

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how slashdot is linked...

Re:Nice writing

[Anonymous Coward]

"... here on Slashdot about the ..."

Thanks for that link, I had no idea...

"... It seem there is an ..."

Thanks for the proper English also, it really helps.

Re:Nice writing

[Anonymous Coward]

heh, that was the first thing that I noticed too. I guess that I have to include obvious links and horrible spelling/grammar in the stories I submit to keep them from getting rejected. It seems that the accepted stories always have too many links, maybe this calls for another slashdot investigation? :)

Same thing for human genome...

[MiTEG]

I know the humane genome project has been plagued by this since the start. The various companies working on it are very hesitant to release information to their competitors, as pharmeceutical companies could make literally billions of $$ with some of the discoveries that have been made.

This lack of sharing for sure has been detrimental to the progress of this research, but without the motivation of potential proft, I'm sure there would be even fewer people working on it. Let's face it, it would be great if everyone worked on things like this "to make the world a better place," but most of the financial backers are doing it "to make a crap load of money."

Re:Same thing for human genome...

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing about the way patents have been affecting progress is that these backers who want to make a "crap load" of money want ALL of the money. Our system of IP protection needs to be redesigned so that attempting to make ALL the money is itself penalized. Make it so that investors (both capital and brain-power) can expect to make a good percentage of the money but nowhere near all of it. Make it so that sharing of basic research is encouraged and is considered the "cost of doing business" and save the big bucks of cash for the developments that are as far beyond basic research as an MRI machine is from a lodestone.

Implementation of such a system is left as an exercise for the reader!

Re:Same thing for human genome...

[bigfatlamer]

I don't want to call bullshit on this one but I'm afraid I must. Sure, there are companies out there *cough* Celera *cough*who hoarded data and even used public data to advance their own research without then adding back to the public database. But to say that the public human (and mouse which is my specialty) genome project suffered because of private interference is karma whore bullshit.

If you remember correctly (which you apparently don't), the public and private human genome sequences were published on the exact same day, one in Science (Celera) and one in Nature (public). The data in the two sets is slightly different but essentially the same stuff. Interestingly though, the private data (to which I have some access) is almost completely undecipherable and full of restrictions on its use, whereas the public data is simple to get to, simple to understand and completely available for downstream academic use (and easily licensable for commercial use).

I do agree with you statement that many financial backers (including some who fund both public and private research) are ...
doing it "to make a crap load of money" but I think you ignore the fact that many of us in "public" research take advantage of the private money to advance the public interest. Yes, there are situations in which NDAs and similar documents are involved, but more often than not, the "private" money that I've been involved with in research has had no limits on publication or sharing of resources/reagents. DOD money on the other hand (I'm just getting started on a DOD funded collaboration) comes with so many strings attached that you feel like a freakin' puppet.

Re:Same thing for human genome...

[norwoodites]

And the mouse genes from Celera before this year always had start missing.

So it was pretty useless.

Re:Same thing for human genome...

[bigfatlamer]

Apparently, the Celera mouse sequence had a lot of stuff missing. At this fall's International Mouse Genome Conference in Edinburgh a few people got up at the end of the Celera hack's talk about their database and asked about all the mistakes and internal inconsistencies that they'd found. His reply was..."no you didn't, our data is right, you need to re-check your data." All in all it was quite sad.

Big Coorperation

[daserver]

I really do not hope science as a whole will share the same faith as a lot of software development has. Support free software before it's too late.

Isn't "pblishing" itself sharing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article doesn't go into the main benefits of sharing generally and freely in programs and studies. Protectionism, if not kept in check, can eventually lead even to people within the same department not sharing information.

publish or perish

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not surprising given today's scientists
are required to publish their work or perish. And let's be clear, only novel work gets into the good journals. Why help fellow scientists stab you in the back?

Dee N. Aiee

i agree

[MoceanWorker]

With so much tension going on right now in the world and the whole situation after 9/11, personally, I believe that any vital information related to science and other fields of development should be kept confidential and internal.

When Clinton was in office, look what happened (i'm a Republican). First off the whole Sandia National Laboratories scandal with the scientist from China who stole information on nuclear development (please keep in mind, my facts are probably wrong because this happened a while back and I haven't got a chance to research on it), but not even that. Clinton sold China a bunch of our layouts for modernized weaponry, aircraft, etc.. probably due to the fact that China gave the Clinton Administration a hearty donation.

The fact is, in general and it's the truth, if you find or discover something that no one ever has found or discovered, be smart and don't share it with anyone. As greedy as I might sound, it's a fact, it's reality. It's like finding a great idea for a business that nobody has right now. Are you going to go telling the whole world you found this great idea? Absolutely not.

Therefore, I think it's best that for now, any new developments should be kept confidential rather than sharing this with colleagues, and especially colleagues from other countries.

Re:i agree

[zaius]

How is finding a cure for cancer a potentially dangerous discovery? That is just one of the thousands of potential outcomes of genetic research--and if researchers don't cooperate, nobody will make any progress.

Re:i agree

[MiTEG]

Yes indeed, your facts are wrong. The Chinese scientist, Wen Ho Lee, worked at Los Alamos and did not STEAL the information as he had a right to access it. He was found not guilty of espionage, and the only thing that he was found to have done wrong was mis handle classified material.

I'm not sure where you heard about Clinton administration's sale of layouts for modernized weaponry and aircraft, but I'd like to see the source. As far as I know, the Chinese military technology is predominantly Russian-based, including their nuclear ICBM's.

Re:i agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Your [sic] a dumbass.

I like the Mark Twain-like irony of your comment, however I'll pretend you're being serious. =)

The whole "I think it's best for now" quote smacks of [fill in the blank]-centrism. The political situation now is *not* the worst it's ever been in history and to throw a blanket over science simply because the media broadcasts everything tragic (in a sort of selective, manipulative way) that happens and the Joe Sixpack public at large is more aware of what's going on in the world, feels outrage about this-that-the-other-thing, etc is doing science a great disservice.

9/11 was an atrocity, yes. But tell you what, there are far worse things that have happened before then and science hasn't stopped for them. It's only when stuff happens to Americans that many Americans become outraged...kind of sad, really. As an example, one of my friends is a Bosnian refugee and she's amazed at how many Amerians don't know what happened there (or what happens beyond the TRL show). I suppose mass graves and genocide aren't telegenic enough for Ted Turner.

Re:i agree

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese got a bunch of their warhead tech from the US during the Clinton years, including the W8(?) "Beowulf cluster" warhead capability.

This is complete bunk

[Ezubaric]

At many of the top research universities in America (such as MIT, Caltech, UM Rolla, and NJIT), I have seen from personal experience that this is not the case. The spirit of academic cooperation and mutual assistance is alive an well.

Any breathing female would certainly be able to find countless opportunities to recieve "genetic information" on any of these campuses.

Re:This is complete bunk

[Anonymous Coward]

Any breathing female would certainly be able to find countless opportunities to recieve "genetic information" on any of these campuses.


Stop this intolerenace! Necrophiles have rights too! If I want to fuck a corpse, that's entirely my decision!

Re:This is complete bunk

[enrayged]

especially if all you can get is a corpse =)

Re:This is complete bunk

[rzbx]

I think that educational institutions don't face this problem as much as the commercial interests. It's obvious that in business, the managers, the CEO's, the investors, and so forth do not understand how important it is to share information. Their main focus is profit, not science. I think this is just more proof that intellectual property should not exist. There are too many myths about intellectual property. The fact that it affects those in the scientific community this way is very sad.

Is this news?

[k98sven]

This is a process that has been going on for quite
some time. Since you can't publish before patenting, this is the way things are.

The notable exception to the rule has been math.
Math departments have been known for their openness, since math discoverys can't be patented.

Or can they? Since many mathematical topics can
be applied as software algorithms, software patents now threaten Math as well.

Software patents need to be stopped, and I think many people agree that the entire patent/copyright/IP thing needs reinventing.

Re:Is this news?

[John Hasler]

"Since you can't publish before patenting, this is the way things are."

This is the way things are in Europe. The US gives you one year after publication.

Nobody in their right mind

[Moderator]

Nobody in their right mind puts the "good of mankind" over money. Tell me, when was the last time you paid extra for an electric car, installed solar panels on your roof, or donated money to starving Ethopians. Greed is human nature. We've progressed just fine over the past hundred thousand years thanks to greed. That's not about to change anytime soon.

Re:Nobody in their right mind

[Corndog]

Thank you for finally allowing me to see a glimmer of intelligence in an otherwise barren landscape! Why doesn't it surprise me that the slashdoters moderated you down? They've done the same to me. I've found it's easier to just stop reading the posts.

Re:Nobody in their right mind

[moonbender]

We've progressed just fine over the past hundred thousand years thanks to greed. That's not about to change anytime soon.

We won't progress another hundred thousand years, in that case. I also disagree with your view of humanity - while you might be a purely egoistic person, most people are willing to sacrifice to varying degrees to help other. Greed is human nature, compassion is, too.

Re:Nobody in their right mind

[Jeremi]

Nobody in their right mind puts the "good of mankind" over money. Tell me, when was the last time you paid extra for an electric car, installed solar panels on your roof, or donated money to starving Ethopians. Greed is human nature.

Maybe it makes you feel better about your own greed to believe that, but it is nonetheless a fact that there are people who do all of the above. You are just not one of them.

Re:Nobody in their right mind

[funkhauser]

You read too much Ayn Rand.

No share = no money

[Shao Ke]

If scientists get a dime of my tax money they damn well better publish it!

Re:No share = no money

[Anonymous Coward]

Whose money? Are you giving them your money? Or are you paying "rent" taxes to maintain citizenship? If the latter, once you "pay your rent", then what the landlord does with it is up to the landlord. Its not your money anymore.

Re:No share = no money

[Shao Ke]

I find that to be a pretty interesting but apalling notion. That's giving the government way to much power and puts us more in the situation of being slaves rather than citizens.
If that's the way it's supposed to work, then thank you very much, I'll pack my bags.It's only around 50 large for citizenship for many countries and I've paid much more than that.
So if you can't pay your "rent" we should evict you?
I pay taxes for my fellow citizens to provide services (police, fire, military, etc).If I'm paying for those services then I have a say in how they are provided.

Re:No share = no money

[Shao Ke]

Oh, yeah. If people want to do research and keep it closed, then that makes it a business loan.

This is tragic...

[S-prime]

One of the original goals of science was the pursuit for the truth, and to these ends scientists shared information freely, with the belief that no matter who made the breakthrough discovery, everyone could and would benefit... it was THE ultimate open source as so many people have pointed out.

Now with all the rampant patenting and profiteering going on, it's no longer about knowledge for the good of humanity but cold hard profits. Even scientists who normally share information may feel pressured to patent or keep secret their discoveries, if only to prevent someone else from depriving them of it.

Thankfully, most scientists in the fields of "pure science" haven't really been affected by this. But scientists working in fields in which profits can be made (biotech, computer science...etc) will likely find their research threatened.

Sorry

[littleRedFriend]

I can't share my opinion on genetic research data with you right now. I'm writing a business plan.

oooh does this mean?

[Teutates]

Does this mean that they may secretly have the abilities to create dinosaurs?

No one would share that information, just ask InGen...

Secrecy

[Digitalia]

Isn't secrecy the Achilles heel of all mad scientists? We need merely look at many notable cinematic cases to realize that their secrecy inevitably leads to their corpses being ravaged by man-insect-ape hybrid monsters. Furthermore, to make the depressing downright suicide-inducing, we, the innocent citizens of this world, are forced to endure the heroic chicanery of Brad-Pitt-like stereotypes.

We must put an end to this for the sake of the people. Say no to Brad Pitt.

Is this a trend...

[zenasprime]

of the growing individualistic (some might say narsasistic) nature of western culture, a side effect of the great corporate fudalist state that we have become, or possibly a combination of both, with each supporting the other?

Re:Is this a trend...

[Anonymous Coward]

Iz yor speling a syde efect uv the crapy naychur uv western edukayshun?

Re:Is this a trend...

[zenasprime]

Probably.

:)

Re:Is this a trend...

[Anonymous Coward]

Iz yor lak ov en inteligint responz a syde efect uv yur idiozee?

AC

So, what exactly does that mean, to patent it?

[ebbomega]

I have to pay royalties for every amino acid that gets synthesized by said Gene?

I suppose the people who patented the Lac Operon could just tax milk, couldn't they?

*sigh*

Re:So, what exactly does that mean, to patent it?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, it all depends, doesn't it?

Biotech is learning from CS

[EccentricAnomaly]

TissueSoft has just released Genome XP that will allow its customers to improve their genetic makeup by subscribing to ithis new service for a reasonable $666 a year. Genome XP features copy-protection to thwart unauthorised release of genetic material... any release of genetic material without purchase of an additional license will stop the user's heart until another license is purchased. In the advent of unintentional release of genetic material, users can have their heart restarted after a call to the TissueSoft license center (open weekdays 10am-3pm EST).

No Longer????

[yintercept]

This isn't a new thing. Throughout history, scientists have shielded their results. Some have done worse things like releasing misleading information to throw off their competitors. This same type of stuff filled the dialogues of ancient history. Alchemists in the middle ages used cryptography to hide their secrets. Leonardo da Vinci wrote backwards, etc.

Of course, being too secret means you never get public acknowledgement. The people who get stuff before the public get the credit, shift the paradigms and all that fun being famous stuff.

The sciences wax and wane between secrecy and publicity seeking. Regardless, the science of the next generation will be built on the stuff that goes public.

As for the debate. I believe it is important that scientists are able to control how they release information. You don't want to have to put everything before the public, because most of it is dead ends.

The new moonrace has begun

[Mario21]

Isn't it so 60-s? Wonder who will be the first this time...

Free as in market

[xxSOUL_EATERxx]

Of the geneticists who said they intentionally withheld data regarding their published work, 80 percent reported it required too much effort to produce the requested information, 64 percent said they were protecting the ability of a student or junior faculty member to publish and 53 percent said they were protecting their own right to publish further findings.

What we have here is a a type of market failure. This does not mean that free markets have failed, but rather that the present market equillibrium is at a situation that is less than optimal for society, a situation that John Maynard Keynes addressed in his General Theory of Economics".

Keep in mind that classical economics assumes perfect information flow for its theories to hold. A situation like this, where academic career concerns and complexity of data interferes with the free flow of information is a clear situation for the government to step in and free up the market, as it is trying to do with the Microsoft monopoly.

Some sort of federally-funded central information clearing-house, where research information could be purchased by the government and put into a freely-accessible database, would be a good first step.

Re:Free as in market

[Ezubaric]

Somebody's taking an intro Ec course . . .

Re:Free as in market

[nomadic]

Uhhh, I believe they teach Keynesian principles in the advanced economics classes too, you know...

Re:Free as in market

[Anonymous Coward]

government interference has caused a lot of the problems in the market now

various laws limit the entry of new businesses into the market, and then make it hard for small businesses to survive

sure there are some things the government could do to help, but it needs to start by pulling back out of the market so small businesses can survive

(don't expect this to happen soon, as big business still control politicians, democrats and republicans alike)

Re:Free as in market

[Anonymous Coward]

how come some private business can't do the same thing, it'd be nicer than having tax dollars spent on yet something else that the government shouldn't do when citizens themselves can

citizens have become way to dependant on the government to do stuff for them, we're a big nation of people still living in their parents basement

Running a genome database

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running a database of histopathology images derived from experimental manipulation of the mouse genome at Cambridge University and it's funded by the EU.

We are publishing all our images and data freely and people seem to be happily using our data, but while we encourage them to share their images, we made the experience that it just doesn't happen. Hardly anyone seems to want to give anything back to the community!

It's quite sad, because the more people would share their information, the more useful the database would be for everyone...

We'll probably have to hire some people now to scan and upload some images.

MG

statistics and there meaning....

[wavecentral]

I'm always one that disproved and disapproved of statistics in general when it comes to drawing societal conclusions.

Reading the data of the survey performed and then reading the ChicTrib article, I'm suprised moneymaking was brought up as an issue. Since, a good breakdown of why information is denied didn't show any indication that money was a factor:

- "80% reported that it required too much effort to produce the materials or information" - This is so true. Having done chemistry and biology research with joint teams in Germany, it is hard to disseminate and gather info for specific inqueries. Especially with alot more folks asking about research being done in this area. It would have been good to do a trend analysis on how many requests for specific research come in on different areas of science... chemical, physics, quantum... vs genetics

- "64%, that they were protecting the ability of a graduate student, postdoctoral fellow, or junior faculty member to publish" - This again is so very true. If you release some info regarding your current research and give it to another group, and they publish material first, you just lost your chance to fulfill your thesis project. You can't do something original in a thesis that has already been done. Can't blame them for denying requests.

- "53%, that they were protecting their own ability to publish" - This is probably the most "iffy" reason. When it comes to publishing papers, if you use one glob of info from another team that you didn't do yourself, that is one more person to include in on the contributing authors. Alot of scientists want to minimize their involvement with other projects, to eliminate backlash, being held back by wrong data, or confirmation of results in data.

Also, the ChicTrib article makes a gross quotation in leaving out that 47% of geneticists only had at least 1 request denied in the past 3 years. And this was just in regards to published research vs. ongoing. The article makes it seem that scientists aren't sharing any info at all, which is just bad news.

All in all, shame on Mr Peter Gorner for a horriably twisted article, grossly manipulating the facts, then considering is an academia "science" article in ChicTrib.

The stats from JAMA clearly refer to published research needing scientist to relinguish info, so other scientists can refute, rebut, and challenge the validity of a complex and controversial area.

Re:statistics and there meaning....

[MadAhab]

Something that not everyone knows about scientists: they stink at handling data. They are careful only insofar as they need to understand it for their own research, but they flat out stink at preserving it for future use or keeping it in formats suitable for exchanging with others. I don't doubt that they are being sincere in claiming that it's just too much trouble; it wouldn't be trouble if they gave a thought to data management in the first place, but that's more computer science than they want to deal with.

There's a couple stories on this note I've had a hard time tracking down; both the original moon landing and the Viking mission were supposed to have "lost" most of their data because it was kept in some undocumented binary format on tapes that no one knew how to read. In the case of the Viking tapes, someone was found who remembered how the data was stored, but in the case of the moon landings, the relevant engineers were dead.

Referees should knock back papers

[Goonie]

Call me naive, but why are peer reviewers accepting half-baked papers?

I suppose their attitude might be "well, given that the alternative is not hearing about this research at all we'll let it through", but, given that in most academic environments publishing papers is the key to a successful career, and that competition to get papers into prestigious journals is high, reviewers for those journals should be able to "encourage" complete publication.

I'm currently preparing my first academic paper (a simulation study of a couple of new algorithms we devised), and I know I'm being very careful to explain how our algorithms and simulation environmental worked such as to make it possible to reproduce our results. If I don't, my supervisor wouldn't let me submit it.

Re:Referees should knock back papers

[4of12]

...but why are peer reviewers accepting half-baked papers?

Peer review relies on the same fount of goodwill that fuels information sharing in the scientific community.

If you've reviewed papers thoroughly, you know that it takes an investment of time on your part to get up to speed in the specific subject that the authors are writing about.

I'm finding that it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify that kind of time investment on any regular basis.

I think peer reviewed papers are a great idea, but the current system has some structural defects, in that the peers are not directly renumerated for their efforts and expertise.

If I pay for it, its mine

[Pyromage]

Two key words here: PUBLIC and PRIVATE. If its funded by some random private agency, then fine, they paid for it, its theirs.

HOWEVER, if it's publicly funded research, the results should be public. If I pay for it to be done, I want it.

Anyone know how the freedom of information act would apply here?

Re:If I pay for it, its mine

[littleRedFriend]

I do not agree with you for the following reasons:

Researchers spend a lot of time doing research. I spend 10 years in a small, dark lab, doing genetic research, becoming a total stranger to family and friends. Do you really think the benefit of mankind was driving me? (I like to tell this on parties, though.). It was more scientific interest and being appreciated (envied, in my wet dreams) by other scientists. Darn, I paid for it. You just contributed your 25 cents a year!.

Scientist are valued by publications and amounts of funds raised. All of these things require you to keep your information from falling into 'competitors' hands. If not, you perish. If being a scientist means you are not entitled to rewards, or being able to protect your work from the (huge and not-always-so-nice) competition then people will stay away from it. In this regard, it is completely unlike the OSS movement, where the reward is based on sharing your work with others (because there is no other way to be rewarded). Scientist who do important work, better protect it. There's a lot of people who would jump on the oppurtunity to 'use' someone elses work. It's not always sure that the inventor will be in the authorlist or acknowledgements.

Re:If I pay for it, its mine

[zoomshorts]

Dreary way of life if you ask me. What ever happened to the scientist wanting to better humanity school of thought? Did it fall by the wayside? Do you think Erlich, Pasteur, or Koch made a bundle from their discoceries? If you do, then you need a brain transplant, and I will not tell doctors of this century the proper way to perform such delicate surgery.

Re:If I pay for it, its mine

[littleRedFriend]

Well my friend you have obviously been brainwashed. Did no one ever tell you there is no such thing as true altruism. If you believe so, you got some catching up to do. I suggest you start with the article, the other posts, Darwin and some Nietschze.

Yes Erlich, Pasteur and Koch (although I doubt you know what they achieved) were also just curious and had personal interests driving them (although much more came out of that).

If I was in need of a brain transplant, you would be the recipient, I'm afraid.

Yet another mis understanding

[tomstdenis]

I betcha its more the case of

"I don't want to share stuff with rival schools that will just patent this and invalidate my work" more than "I'm elite!".

Look at other fields like math/crypto/Comp sci/etc... They're fairly open and they share their stuff. That's because crypto research is not patentable as profitably [name 10 people who like RC6 for instance...]

Tom

This is a problem in a number of fields

[Anonymous Coward]

Having done meta-analytic research and genomic research as well, I can tell you this scares the hell out of me, but is also something that isn't limited to genetics at all.

There are rampant problems with private corporate interests having too much influence over the scientific process. I have written numerous legislators about this and it drives me crazy. All these current societal problems--with IP, patent law, and scientific corruption--intersect in bioinformatics and genomics to a horrific extent. It's discouraging enough and makes me sad enough that I've felt like abandoning the field altogether, against my interests (I haven't though).

However, scientific sharing of information isn't as widespread as it sometimes is made out to be, and is lacking in a number of fields (like psychology, which I happen to be a part of). The simple explanation behind the findings--supported by the link--is that people are usually just too lazy, busy, or scared by belligerent critics to give information out to others. I ask for information for meta-analyses all the time, and usually only get replies about 50% of the time. Even when I do, I know the person somewhat, know someone who knows them, or have some sort of institutional affiliation with them (i.e., have the same graduate school alma mater).

Although corporitization is a problem, it's simply not necessary to explain lack of sharing of scientific information. The real causes, although equally disturbing and frustrating, are probably far more mundane.

I guess the really scary thing is that corporatization might make these problems worse than they are.

Slave System Is Responsible

[Louis Savain]

I've said this before but it bears repeating.

The reason for not sharing information is obvious: under our economic system, the only source of income for almost everybody is individual labor. Scientific research is a very labor intensive activity and nobody is going to give their work away for nothing. Sure some scientists may share knowledge with others in the hope of winning a Nobel prize and make a name for themselves but that is a long shot.

Intellectual property laws exist only because we have a slavery system. Our livelihood depends on working for others so we can pay our taxes. The reason that we have to work for others is that 99% of people have been deprived of an inheritance in the wealth of the land. Income property is owned by a few and the state. The others are slaves. Artists, programmers and scientists depend on their work to make a living. Can we blame them? We all depend on our labor because we are all slaves. So now we are swimming in a ocean of laws and rules that take away our remaining liberties, one by one. And we are becoming more and more selfish.

But let's face it, if you cannot put a fence around it or put chains on it, it does not belong to you. Makes no difference whether it is ideas, writings, software, music or what have you. Once you've released it, like the air, it belongs to nobody and everybody. Scientists know that as soon as they reveal their secrets by sharing or even patenting them, there is nothing they can do to prevent other people from taking advantage of their labor. IP laws only serve to promote hateful competition and selfishness in a world that is becoming increasingly violent.

The internet and other communication technologies (e.g., file sharing systems) are the first major kinks in the armor of a sick system. As technology progresses, the system will eventually collapse. What will happen to a slave-based economy when robots and advanced artificial intelligences replace everybody, i. e., when human labor, knowledge and expertise become worthless?

And don't think for a minute this won't happen in your lifetime. The internet is the latest giant leap in human communication. Before that came mass telecommunication technologies and before that was the movable press. If history is any indication, we can expect a giant leap in technological progress and scientific knowledge. In fact, it is happening before our very eyes.

We should all demand a system where everybody is guaranteed income property, a piece of the pie, an estate if you will. There is plenty for everybody.

Communism confiscates all property and enslaves everybody. Capitalism gives property to a few and enslaves the rest. It's sad. The land has existed for billions of years before the first human beings appeared on the earth. Nobody has any legitimate ownership claim on the land. It should not be divided for a price. It should be an inheritance for us and our children and their children. It's the only way to guarantee freedom and a truly free market in a world where human labor is about to go the way of the dinosaurs.

Demand liberty! Nothing less.

-----

Re:Slave System Is Responsible

[arkanes]

While you certainly have some valid philosphical points, you cheapen both your argument and those who were (and, in places, still are) by calling laborers slaves.

Also, the fact that many of us are able to make a living as "slaves", without working the land, is one of many things which has allowed our civilaztion to progress. It wasn't until we (as a race) had the infrastructure to support people who didn't actively farm/hunt/otherwise produce food that we were able to move beyond a subsistence level. And fantazise all you like about the noble savage living as one with Nature, but people living at a subsistence level will JUMP at a chance to move beyond it.

Don't Forget Selfishness!!!

[dupper]

If these scientists got the millions of dollars, the respect (albeit worthless) of anyone who reads People Magazine and the top quality pussy (or whatever they may prefer) that Hollywood celebrities and Pop singers get for sharing their ideas and discoveries, the cooperative spirit in the scientific community would expand faster than Britney Spears' breasts after another few upgrades.

It's not the selfishness of the scientists..

[I_redwolf]

per se.. It's really the greediness and selfish of the companies said scientiests/researchers work for that are the ones not promoting the sharing. Just as in the computer industry there are probably NDA's that need to be signed etc. It's always been like this in the scientific industry except for the fact that scientists had alot more platforms to share their research and did so, simply to better science. Those scientists are either retired or for the most part teaching from my own deduction. The new upcoming breed don't seem to follow what was common practice from the 30's-70's.. Also when scientists DO get access to facilities that allow them to research (invite people etc, the whole 9 yds) there are alot of University lawyers and industry lawyers that prevent who gets invited and who actually hears about it. The amount of scientists sharing information has really changed, I blame it on lawyers.

Some scientists still share...

[sunhou]

There's too much money to potentially be made with some genetic data and the associated research, so people try to guard it. Physicists still share a lot of their research -- witness this e-Print archive, which has a lot of preprints/reprints, mainly in physics, but they're adding other fields such as CS and math.

Their stats show about 2500 article submissions per month lately (it's been increasing pretty much linearly for the past 10.5 years, although I suspect that uploading a revised version also counts as a "submission" in that graph), and about 150,000 connections per day. It's been around for more than 10 years, and is still going strong. It's a great resource; I wish my particular field had something equivalent.

Re:Some scientists still share...

[norwoodites]

you did not give the right address xxx.lanl.gov, a much better address than arxiv.org. It is the same site but the xxx is just better.

perhaps you should find out what patents are...

[autopr0n]

If you patent something, then you are by definition sharing it. Patents are public, for all to see

Re:perhaps you should find out what patents are...

[Jeremi]

If you patent something, then you are by definition sharing it. Patents are public, for all to see

That is the idea, anyway... in my former position at a dot-com, the management wanted to obtain a software patent based on some work I had done. Their advice to me for describing my software for the patent was (more or less in these words) "make it descriptive enough so that we can sue anyone who tries to do something similar, but vague enough so that it would not be of much use to anyone trying to figure out how to do the same thing". I trust not all patents are done with this sort of mindset, but any that are, are certainly not doing much to help the public good.

Re:perhaps you should find out what patents are...

[sjames]

If you patent something, then you are by definition sharing it. Patents are public, for all to see

In that case, I suggest we solve hunger and homelessness by allowing those unfortunate people to look at food and housing.

200 years ago, no technological change large enough to be called a revolution realloy happened in less than 20 years anyway. Today, in some fields, important changes happen in

The field of genetic engineering appears to be at about the point computers were in 1979. The only difference is that the patent/copyright issue has been 'resolved' already, unlike software in 1979.

Re:perhaps you should find out what patents are...

[sjames]

I trust not all patents are done with this sort of mindset, but any that are, are certainly not doing much to help the public good.

I haven't seen a patent new enough to still be in effect that WASN'T done with that mindset.

What happened to the quest for knowledge?

[autopr0n]

Simple. Who needs knowledge when you could have money?

Re:What happened to the quest for knowledge?

[HiThere]

Close.
By sharing your knowledge, you benefit other people, and potentially damage yourself. By accepting their sharing it, you benefit yourself.

People usually recommend that others act in ways benefit them. They usually act in ways that they see as beneficial to themselves.

Before the explosive broadening of the coverage of the patent laws, the academic criterion was used, so that by publishing your findings, you benefited yourself. Once patents were broadened, schools started to consider that research findings were "classified", and patents were seen as a source of money. So the criteria changed.

The schools were responding in a predictable way to changes in the law, and the scientists have responded in a predictable way to the changes in the schools. There are intermediate cases, also, e.g. scientists who get the patents in their own names, and are entreprenurial enough to start their own companies.

This is similar in many ways to England at the start of the industrial revolution. England went to some lengths to prevent the knowledge of how to build the powered machinery from being exported. It was, eventually, but by that time England had gained sufficient power that Napoleon couldn't stand against it, and the British Empire was created. (And it was one of the things that was being surpressed in the American colonies .. prior to 1776.)

Nations, guilds, unions, professions, families ... all of these have, when the occasion permitted, attempted with varying degrees of success to monopolize secrets. The justification for the existence of patents it to loosen up the grip on those secrets. Therefore one of the requirement for a patent is supposed to be a description accurate enough that one "skilled in the field" will be able to easily recreate the patented device. And this is why things that are obvious aren't supposed to be patentable.

If one looks at the current patent law, at least in application, one sees exactly how well this intention is being executed. (Ugh! It's being done so poorly we'd be better off without ANY patent law.)

But these are the standard ways that people act in situations. If the environment encourages sharing, then people share. If it encourages possessiveness, then people are possessive. The current environment is still a bit mixed, but it has tilted strongly in favor of secretiveness and possessiveness in the last few decades. Now, if you have the money, you can patent nearly anything. Feverish dreams of wealth inspire people who haven't a chance of benefiting to support still more restrictive proposals. They can at least dream of winning.

The results of these changes are that the access to benefits is being restricted to a smaller and smaller proportion of the populace. (Well, these benefits were always the property of a minority. Most people won't miss them.) And the imbalance between the upper (most wealthy) levels and the lower levels (the subsistence) has increased. In Athens the ratio betweent the top and the bottom (excluding slaves and women) was about 50, i.e., the richest person owned/earned about 50 times as much as the poorest. There is justification for a larger degree of separation in our civilization. If it's going to be structured as a hierarchy, and that seems to be the simplest organization that people are comfortable with, then there needs to be a larger number of levels than Athens had, and one of the marks of separation that people accept is degree of wealth. But one could easlily argue that in our current civilation it has gotten much too extreme. I think that an absolute limit of, say, 1000 times would be reasonable. I.e., nobody would be allowed to earn more than 1000 times the minimum wage (or, perhaps, the welfare payment). Anything in excess would be taxed at the rate of 100%. This would allow the wealth of the most wealthy to increase at the same rate as the wealth of society as a whole increased.

A top heavy pyramid fosters insane dreams of wealth, and dreams of insane wealth. And this is one of the things that has happend to the quest for knowledge.
.

Good attempt at a troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

You had a good try at your troll. It was rational and never became absurd, which is where a lot of trolls lose it. You should add another three paragraphs, and maybe kick up the anti-clinton rhetoric a notch. Can't have too much bait. Finally, add some links to Newsmax or Drudgereport that back up your statements and you'll have people falling all over themselves trying to refute you.

Cheshire

As a Former Molecular Biologist

[Lord_HalfJack]

I have had to witness the rapid, (indeed reckless) transition of the field from a public forum into a private industry. The majority of bench geneticists now, sadly, work for private firms making money off of techniques that were developed with public money. No money ( and precious little data) flows back from the private to the open public sector. As a result, Public, open Science dies. At the major Universities where I have worked, many of the scientists have had to shut down research due to lack of funding, and are not being replaced. Now there are long open stretches of hallway, consisting of empty labs and labs converted into storage rooms or ad-hoc conference rooms. Yet few of the biotech firms responsible for the diminishment of academic science realize that they are sawing off the branch on which they sit. A corporation simply can't openly perform Peer review, for fear of giving away corporate secrets. And without Peer review, Scientific endeavor ceases to be science at all, but becomes R+D as you would find in any corporation. the nearest analogy i can find is that of Alchemy. In the beginning of the renaissance, philosphers began to realize that on could manipulate the porties of substances. Rather than sharing their data with each other, and focus on the understanding of matter, they instead chose to individually pursue research dedicated to pure commercial value (i.e. the synthesis of gold). 600 years of tinkering with mercury and sulfur proved fruitless. It took only 150 years of peer reviewed work, aimed at nothing but pure scientific understanding, to understand the true principles of chemistry (and the fact that gold cant be made by chemical processes).

Re:As a Former Molecular Biologist

[Anonymous Coward]

while i agree with your sentiments in general, you make it sound as if the "150 years of peer reviewed work" did not benefit at all from the "600 years of tinkering with mercury and sulfur". this is hardly fair.

The world will suffer..

[Anonymous Coward]

from the growing trend of
Commercialization uber alles.

The irony is that anything that impedes the open
sharing of info slows the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Good thing the patent system or more accurately
it's current perverse incarnation wasn't
around at the start of human civilazation.
We would all still be in caves.

You can't have it both ways ...

[LL]

... given the fact that molecular biology is becoming capital intensive (look at the multi-million dollar synchrotrons, protein-chips, sequencers, etc) the public system just cannot fund everyone. The acceptance of private funding means constraints as companies are not in the charity business. If you look at the impact of the medical system, you'd notice similar structural shifts as GPs are merged into medical centres clustered around MRI/X-ray/capital machines. A similar activity is happening in academia with greater infrastructure forcing consolidation into smaller clusters (e.g. take a look at the San Diego biotech cluster). The explanation is simple, better equipment equals higher throughput and thus productivity. Given that bioscience is basically a search through a multi-dimensional space of all combinations of proteins, you can see why the group that covers more area has a greater probably of discovering something interesting.

On the other hand, public science has the implicit assumption of peer-review ... even industry recognise that they cannot delay publications more than a certain amount (6-9 months??). Hence the excuse that they are preserving the publication track record of their apprentices is a bit of a cop-out. Basically they are saying yes but wait x months for some underling to publish. The problem comes in the rush to produce results, people ignore the fact that they have to be *reproduceable* results (otherwise by definition is it not science). There have been stories of groups losing original material so the only claim to fame is by squinting at a graph and hoping that the parameters they choose for their analytical process (trust me ... any mathematical analysis has zillions of twiddle factors) are not a fluke.

So either we go back to the slow but certain government funded research or accept that private incentives will create only temporary information asymmetry. The private market for knowledge is rather unformed at the moment as there are no clear guidelines as to what are acceptable practicese.

LL

Re:You can't have it both ways ...

[mikera]

I strongly disagree with your assertion that government cannot be effective in areas which are capital intensive. In most contries, the government is by far the largest investor in and owner of physical capital.

Roads/rail networks are an excellent example. They are extremely effective, basic infrastructure that can be a tremendous advantage to a developed economy. They cannot be provided efficiently by the free market (read some basic economics texts if you want to be convinced), so the government steps up to the plate. Lo and behold, having good transport infrastructure is a key factor in economic success, and by and large it is government provided.

The government expense is justified because the return on the investment (economic success, labour mobility, more income and therefore more tax revenue) is high. I like to think of research in the same way - you invest public money to make discoveries that will benefit everyone and create a better economy overall. Having this research in the public domain is superior to having it privately owned because it allows free market competition in resulting products and better enables incremental research.

I think the really interesting issue is how the government can get smart about funding in order to get even more discoveries happening in the public domain. Results-based funding, for example, would provide an incentive for private enterprises to make public discoveries.

If I pay for it, I should get the results

[cabalamat2]

If my taxes pay for science, I should be entitled to the results of the research, and if the scientists won't disclose it, they should be forced to hand back all public money that went into their research and all the research they used in making their discoveries.

*ahem*

[Anonymous Coward]

That's disgusting! Stop playing with your food!

Distributed

[Anonymous Coward]

I have one thing to say. Distributed.net

We're always hearing about scientific and medical advancements (or attempts at) by individual researchers or small teams. What if all these players cooperated instead of trying to individually be the best.

Distributed.net has the right idea. Instead of a few groups/schools/companies trying to work out a project, make 100,000 scientists work on it.

Too bad it will never be that simple. Everyone wants to be the greedy winner of whatever prize, not a winning participant.

Scientific research was never shared to begin with

[Bowie J. Poag]

Here's a clue, gang: Science costs money and takes time. As a result, Univerities, private companies, and even our government have a vested interest in the fruit that research tends to yeild. The whole point of science is to obtain your results and THEN share it with the scientific community, not the other way around. Its not like Oppenheimer was supposed to ring up Hitler from the basement of UC's football stadium and tell him "Hey, I gotsa l33t c0n+rOL3d fi$$1on c#@MBeR down here man!!! Ch3k it 0ut! B00y@h!!"

Get real. Open source is not applicable to science, never was, never will be.

I don't get it.

[burntsoul]

"Many scientists won't share research data, study finds." I don't understand why terms have to be redefined like this. Just because a researcher uses the scientific method to get results, it dosen't make them a scientist. It sould be, "Many employees perfoming cutting edge research for commercial interests won't share research data, study finds." Gee, what a revelation.

How right you are! (semi-rant)

[epepke]

I wasn't a molecular biologist, but I did some work on bioinformatics and the human genome back in 1991-1993. I also got to experience the entire life cycle of a scientific research institute, from before its birth to its death (the Supercomputer Computations Research Institute at FSU.

The 1980's and early 1990's were pretty good. We did a lot of good work and released all of it, gratis. Then a couple of years after the turn of the decade, everything started to go to hell, and funding dried up. This is not to mean that there was a lot of funding in the first place. Academia has always been a life of genteel poverty. When I left academia and went into industry, they started paying me at more than double the amount that I had to work myself up to for 13 years in academia. But there are satisfactions to the purity of unclassified, public research that many people in days of yore considered to make up for the lack.

All the administrators started to talk in basso profundo tones about how research in the future was going to be like Business to succeed. Of course, none of them were actually interested in doing any of the things that business did to succeed. They just wanted it to be more, sorta, kinda, you know, businesslike. So they quite predictably floundered around for a little while, and everything fell apart. There is still public research being done, but way less of it, and actual businesses who knew how to run businesses took over.

Part of the trouble is that all those clowns who say "if I pay a dime for it, I want it" aren't willing to pay any more than a dime, and you'd better believe they're going to stick their tongues straight down the cracks of any politicians who promise to drop it to a nickle or a penny. They still want it, though, because, By God It's Their Tax Pennies!

Of course, they always have a justification for that, like Look How Much I'm Paying in Taxes, or Maybe Universities Would Get More Money If They Didn't Have Football and Taught Better. None of the justifications will pay the piper.

Old problem, some recourse

[Fn0rd]

For this same reason, several scientific journals require that researchers agree to make their materials (strains, clones, etc) available to all.
If you break that (written) promise you won't be publishing in that journal again. I wonder if any publically-funded grants have such a clause? (share or no more tax dollars for you!)

In labs I have worked in, it was considered an honor to receive such requests for the products of your research. And there was always the constant dread of being scooped by the competition...

Competition is a good thing.

Public Money

[wagadog]

If I were back in grad school again, I would focus exclusively on developing commercially viable or militarily useful things, and avoid publishing the details. Because:

• the only person the publications benefit are the faculty member who will take credit for your research, not you, the grad student or postdoc that actually did the research.
• the only people conference proceedings benefit are your competitors--theft is simplyrampant.
• if what you share is a fact that's at variance with prior or in-press publications of powerful faculty academics, your work will get stomped on for political reasons, no matter how valid the facts you report are (remember what David Baltimore did to Margot O'Toole when her research discredited his?)

99% of what goes on in universities is just a bunch of political games, and has nothing to do with discovering or establishing anything resembling the truth. So why bother?

Looks like the faculty members are tired of watching their students do this, and are trying it on themselves -- after being content with merely raping their students' ideas and research for so many decades, they've suddenly realized that there are bigger fish to fry than fat government grants (that the administration takes more than half of anyway).

"Big, Big Science. Every man, every man for himself." -- Laurie Anderson

Re:Public Money

[Rogerborg]

• If I were back in grad school again, I would focus exclusively on developing commercially viable or militarily useful things, and avoid publishing the details

Hear hear. But really, why even bother staying in academia? As a graduate comp sci researcher, I found that the situation even six years ago was that the only funding available was either from corporate sources with big nasty NDA's attached, or was a fucking pittance that would have seen me eating cold canned beans and shopping for clothes in store dumpsters for the rest of my adult life.

I reckoned that if I was going to whore for a corporation, I'd do it directly, make a living wage, and compete with average developers, not the super-dedicated types who stayed in academia. It's working out pretty well so far, and open source projects take care of scratching the Greater Good itch.

Incidentally, the thing that swung my decision was a conversation with my department head, where he stated flat out that if I did original research which was later patented or otherwise claimed as IP by a corporation, the university would not support or defend me if I chose to publish and got the arse sued off of me, even if it was prima facia evident that I was publishing prior art. Given that the only funding open to me that would even let me publish was of the cold-beans-and-dumpsters type, I reckoned that sounded like a bad bet and headed for the hills.

not surprising

[Jebus_the_spork]

scientists not sharing information does not surprise me in the least. now a days, a scientist could sell his information or something he found out to a company who would use it for profit. why give the inside edge to your "compedetor" so to speak?

I have done significant research into this...

[Anonymous Coward]

...however, I will not share it until you sign my NDA and licensing agreement.

As in Asimov's novel

[gakguk]

This reminds me a dialogue from Asimov's (AFAIK) Robot series, where scientific improvement in space collonies come to a halt because people live too long. They prefer keeping the knowledge secret since they have enough time to research+test+conclude and acquire fame.

Imagine a life, say, 300 years long. You have enough time to write your own KDE, eh? Horrifying.

oh well

[rice_burners_suck]

Scientists should not share information. in fact, i believe that all publically funded research should be paid for publically (duh) but the scientist or whatever would retain all rights to it, AND, for added convenience, the public would then pay the scientist's patent fees, AND the public would ALSO pay for an elaborate marketing campaign, for the scientist's exclusive benefit. For fairness, patents resulting from publically funded research NEVER expire, and if licensed, the licensing fees MUST be ridiculously high. Finally, all scientists who profit from their publically funded research would be exempt from paying taxes on all income that results from the research. At that point, we'd have a concise, simple, effective, and most of all, FAIR law regarding publically funded research.

And I forgot to mention one thing: The public would also pay a "beer fee" to cover the cost of beer consumed by the scientists and their partners/employees/whatever during the research.

Open communication tools will always help

[PhotoGuy]

Tools like then internet will always help keep the flow of information going. If genetic researchers start restricting information (for financial reasons, most likely), this is no different from software companies restricting their flow of information (source code). I have no problem with either. People have the freedom using the global communication tool of the internet, to do "alternative" projects that accomplish the same.

(Although I have a bit more of a problem with it in the case of genetic research, which more directly impacts humankind; on the other hand, it impacts mainly the well-developed and financially affluent nations, which can afford to apply genetic results. Third world nations would benefit more from a better supply of penicillin than genetic research; so in the global scheme of things, genetic researchers holding back information doesn't make a big difference to the world. Even if a cure for cancer was found, I would guess that *far* fewer people die from cancer than more basic things, world-wide. Most of the world's population doesn't live long enough to develop cancer, and other more subtle diseases for which genetic research would make a major difference.)

Of course, all of the above is subject to me not being fully informed on the subject, which I'm most certainly not. Regardless it's an interesting discussion.

-me

Levi Strauss

[yintercept]

As I recall, Levi Strauss was actually the first to patent jeans....

Patents vs. Trade Secrets

[EricEldred]

A recent study from Harvard Business School found that smaller bioscience companies (the truly innovative ones) were not patenting research results, but rather keeping them as trade secrets. Patenting works for large companies that can afford to defend the patents and have enough to exchange rights with other big companies. So the science will never enter the public domain.

It's time to repeal the laws that encourage universities to take public money for research and then privatize the results for the profits of these big companies. And it's time to reform this crazy system of "intellectual property" law that is destroying science and innovation.
Probably we will first have to change campaign finance laws, though.

reproducibility

[markj02]

The traditional standard for publication is that the experiment must be described in sufficient detail reproducible by others. However, this standard has never been met reliably in the past; even if the issue was just academic competition, researchers might keep a crucial experimental detail secret or delay making available necessary experimental materials in order to keep other research groups from catching up too fast.

Why is reproducibility important? Let's say group A reports some really neat genetics in mice. Group B doesn't have much interest in reproducing it in mice (little potential for scientific rewards) but tries the same thing in primates and it doesn't work. Without being able to reproduce the work of group A, group B doesn't know whether there is a genuine difference in primates, whether there is something wrong with their procedure, or whether group A just published an incorrect or fraudulent result.

Peer reviewers for reputable journals should insist on reproducibility, which should include a binding offer by the authors to make available all necessary materials to other scientists to reproduce the results and build on them. If anything else were to get published, it should at least be marked in big, red letters as "irreproducible" and should not count much towards someone's scientific publication record--after all, it might all be invented.

Re:reproducibility

[markmoss]

Not to mention that reproducibility is the only defense against scientists who lie, exaggerate their results, or are self-deluded. And ethics in science (as in other parts of society) is definitely in decline -- cases of fraud used to be rare enough that each one was remembered for a century (e.g., Piltdown Man), now there are several fraudulent scientists caught each year.

Temporarily withholding information

[Herger]

Most data from publicly funded projects does get published eventually. Data is often withheld for many reasons. Usually, the scientists simply want first credit for the work - early release of info would give competing labs an advantage. In this case, it's not to push a project to market, but to show goos results to get further funding for the same or related projects. There is a limited amount of funding available from government sources (NIH, NSF, etc.) and the review committees who look at grants demand to see results before they fund research. Current and past publications are indications of the scientist's success. Also, publications are often used as a meter-stick of productivity and original thinking when deciding tenure and graduation of Ph.D.'s so there is considerable interest in keeping data secret to get the publication. Publications will not be accepted if it's been done already by your competitor.

Relating to genetic research specifically, whether it's patented, published, or not, there is a huge heap of genetic data in the NIH GenBank database:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

IANAL but I believe you can subpoena federally funded projects under the Freedom of Information Act (5 USC 552). This would probably be very obnoxious though, but I think I read somewhere that certain large corporations have tried this to effectively steal research data from federally funded projects for their own private (secret, unpublished) efforts.

Difficulty of producing data

[alansz]

Now, I'm not a geneticist, I'm a research psychologist in the area of medical judgment and decision making, where professional norms are to keep your data for years and provide it on request, but I fully understand the problem of "difficulty/convenience" -- even in finding your old data for yourself.

This is a place where research scientists could really use some good old fashioned technological and social help from programmers. Consider a typical computer-administered psychological experiment's process:

1. Write code to run the experiment and log the data. If you didn't document the code or write self-documenting code, you'll have trouble when someone wants the data later.
2. Run the experiment and collect those log files. If the log file format isn't self-documenting, you'll have trouble when someone wants the data later.
3. Get all the log files transformed into a format that can be usefully imported into statistical software. If you didn't document all the variables and values in the resulting stat file, you'll have trouble when someone wants the data later. And most statistical packages allow you 8 characters for variable names and make detail labelling of variables and values highly tedious.
4. Analyze the data and produce some output. If you didn't save the analysis details (as is all too easy to forget if you're doing stats with a dialog-box-based program), you'll ... (well you know the rest).
5. Write a paper describing what you did and submit it to a journal. Have it accepted (hopefully) in 4-6 months. Have it appear about 6 months later. It is now probably 18-24 months since you started the study. If you're lucky, you've probably changed computers at least once by now, and possibly offices/buildings/universities, too. If you can find the data yourself and understand what it means, you're ahead of the game.

This is not too far from the problem of managing a source code project over time and across maintainers. It's not enough for professional scientists to have standards for retention and sharing of data -- we need a tutorial in documentation (and statistical and other software packages that better support it.)

Speaking as a molecular geneticist...

[Rat's_ass_donor]

I think you'll find that very little has changed lately. Scientists have always been very careful about what information they share with others, for fear of giving an advantage to competitors.

If a project is in the early stages, you don't talk about it at all.

If a project has produced some great results, and it is well in progress, you'll talk about it, but might be a bit hazy on the details. For example, take a geneticist who is hunting for genes contributing to a certain disease. He/she has it partially narrowed down, and is showing a map of the BACs and YACs in the candidate region. Try asking them what chromosome they are looking at. They won't tell you.

If a project is near complete, and is being written up or has already been submitted to a journal, you'll be very open. The odds of being "scooped" at this point are minimal.

These rules vary somewhat depending on whether we're talking about a resource-rich lab that works on projects almost no one else can do, or a small lab doing projects that can be rapidly repeated somewhere else. But in general I think they hold true, and have for many years.

Re:Scientific research was never shared to begin w

[Chris Johnson]

Thankfully (harmfully?) the real world will provide feedback on whether you have any idea what you're talking about.

Open source and communication in computing brought C, Unix, the Internet, e-mail, etc.

What has your information-control ethic brought? .NET? Wait and see how well THAT works.

The concern is simply that the attitude you seem to approve of tends to stifle progress. Of course, you could simply insist on your self-centered view and insist that the resulting rate of progress is the best of all possible worlds. Buy some old copies of 'Pravda' from the post-collapse Soviet Union, that could help show you how to argue such points...

People should lobby for..

[Emperor BMA]

laws against people patenting human (heck, even animal) genes. If your genes are all patented, you would either a) have to pay a royalty to live, or b) have to be exempt, so it'll be pay or die in a few years (like it isn't already).

The only benefit of gene patents is you can sue the company that patents the Alzheimer's Syndrome gene(s) for wrongful damage by a defective product!

Shun them

[Anonymous Coward]

If you won't share then you're not really a scientist, but a greedy corporate lackey; these people should be shunned and considered pariahs in the scientific community as they represent the antithesis of that for which science stands.

Too much effort?

[tony_gardner]

People writing here should consider that to produce a journal paper, which is not an incremental paper (That is, the work has not been mostly published before- what the public thinks of as publishing your work) takes somewhere between 1 and 2 weeks of full time work.
Consider the dilemma, scientists have to choose between telling others about their work, or doing science. Which would you choose?

Re:Scientific research was never shared to begin w

[Bowie J. Poag]

"Open source and communication in computing brought C, Unix, the Internet, e-mail, etc.
"

Wrong. Those were brought to you by AT &T Bell Labs in the mid-late 60's, and were far from "open". The development efforts going on there were as closed as you can get. Here's an example: The concept of "email", while not developed by Bell Labs, was privately developed for nearly 7 years before it was shown to the public in December '68. Google for Doug Englebart sometime. He worked for decades to give kiddies like you the idea the impression you were doing something new.

You need to go back and learn a little history before you open your mouth and let your foot in.

Cheers,

A question for the geneticists/biologists

[DG]

There seems to be a fair number of people actually employed in these fields responding to this article, so this seems like a good place to ask this question.

It appears to me that we're pretty far along when it comes to the biology of sickness-by-infection, where an illness is caused by being attacked by other organisms. There's a long way to go, but it seems to an outsider that most of the fundimental processes are understood, and the lion's share of what remains is of the nature of "find germ, study germ, develop treatment that kills germ without killing host"

But it also seems that we're not very far along when it comes to understanding sickness-though-internal-breakdown, where actual body processes either fail to function or function abnormally.

It strikes me that understanding how human genetics really work is the key to all survival. If we knew how every gene and every internal process functioned, then we cound re-engineer our own genome to fix problems. Eliminate cancer, eliminate AGING, and so forth.

It would thus suggest to me that working on deciphering the human genome is the most important problem in human biology in history, and perhaps even the most important problem EVER.

We should have huge amounts of public money poured into this problem, with all results made public, and all information shared.

Would you agree? Have I made any erronious assumptions?

DG

mp3 version of research paper to share = ./able?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it realistic to share research papers knowing its sensitivity as a business information?

Once George Gilder preached about 'democratized technology' in democratic society being the winnner in comparing CDMA technology in US vs GSM(gov controlled European technology).

To win in a democratic society; use democratized method in term of the way information flows. Beside of the argument of legality of mp3, it maybe the method of making money not the way information travels. That method($$) needs a major paradigm shift and the gilt is on recording industry to come up with right method.

At the same time, all the scientific articles and research papers should desirably be able to mp3tized to boost great minds with a poor cash flow. If you want to compare your note with one of scientific mind, check the following link discussing on 'Data Withholding in Academic Genetics' along with 5 other competing sources at here.